At the Easter Vigil, the journey along the paths of sacred Scripture begins with the account of creation. This is the liturgy’s way of telling us that the creation story is itself a prophecy. It is not information about the external processes by which the cosmos and man himself came into being. The Fathers of the Church were well aware of this. They did not interpret the story as an account of the process of the origins of things, but rather as a pointer towards the essential, towards the true beginning and end of our being.
Pope Benedict XVI, Easter Homily
Scripture is not a collection of data from which we can construct objectively true doctrines. Doctrines which we can come dangerously close to imagining to be superior to even scripture. No, every genre of scripture, every form of text has a prophetic word to speak. Pope Benedict goes on to show the importance of seeing God as creator, of care for creation, of the dignity of humanity and of the divine creative reason. Ultimately, he shows how the narrative of resurrection both affirms and subverts the original creation story – the climax of the sabbath, the seventh day of rest is subsumed in the day of victory, the first day of the week, Resurrection Sunday!
Creation remains good… Hence the world can be saved. Hence we can and must place ourselves on the side of reason, freedom and love – on the side of God who loves us so much that he suffered for us, that from his death there might emerge a new, definitive and healed life.
Resurrection is the fulfilment of the prophetic call of creation; God has acted decisively in creation to rescue and redeem it.